1. Technical Field
The present disclosure generally relates to methods and systems for processing print jobs is a print shop. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to methods and systems for increasing the efficiency of processing print jobs by soliciting and processing numerous print jobs that utilize resources available in a print shop in a cost-effective manner.
2. Background
A print shop is typically a high-volume document production entity that produces documents, such as checks, invoices, statements, books, magazines and the like, received from businesses and/or individuals. In some cases, the data printed on each document (or set of documents) varies significantly. For example, the data on a first document might pertain to a first credit card user for a credit institution, while the data on a second document might pertain to a second credit card user for the credit institution. However, in other cases, such as book printing, several identical documents might be produced and finished consecutively.
A conventional print shop workflow is depicted in FIG. 1. As shown in FIG. 1, incoming data pertaining to a print job is processed 105 to determine the operations to be performed. The data is then printed 110 using, for example, a continuous feed printer. A continuous feed printer may include a roll of paper including pre-printed forms. As such, paper is continuously fed into the printer resulting in high speed printing. Data can then be printed on the forms corresponding to a plurality of recipients. Other printers, such as cut sheet printers, can also be used in a print shop.
One or more of folding 115, inserting 120 and sorting 125 operations can be performed based on the requirements of the print job. For a folding operation 115, each printed form can be folded according to the print job requirements. Ancillary documents can be inserted 120 into the print job. For example, an advertisement for a service provided by a bank might be inserted into a bank statement print job. A sorting operation 125 could be used to sort the documents into individual document groups for each recipient. Each document group can then be mailed 130 to the appropriate recipient.
Typically a user submits a print job for processing and agrees to pay a quoted price for processing the print job. The price is based on a fixed pricing model such as a fixed price per sheet or a fixed price per impression. The price for a particular print job could then be adjusted based on additional operations to be performed, such as folding, inserting, shrink wrapping and the like.
Improvements to this method have been proposed. For example. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/343,332 to Eschbach et al. describes a method and system for linking a print shop to an online offer generation module and associated pricing module. The described method includes a dynamic pricing model in which the price for processing a print job is established during the ordering process.
In addition, automated price negotiations for document services have been developed. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,826,244 to Huberman discloses an automated brokered auctioning system for document services that enables customers and suppliers to submit bids for a document service. The automated process then determines whether a price can be established that is satisfactory to both a customer and a supplier. If the price can be established, a transaction is proposed to the customer and the supplier at the established price.
The above-described print job processing algorithms provide adequate pricing and price negotiation models for print jobs received by print shops. However, such algorithms do not account for or seek to improve the efficiency of the print shop. As such, the print shop could have a number of resources that are idle while other resources are highly utilized. For example, if the print shop processes print jobs that require shrink wrapping but no insertions, the insertion devices for the print shop may sit idle. Alternatively, if the print shop is only processing a number of book orders, continuous feed printers might be idle, while cut sheet printers might be highly utilized.